


The Teacher

by SerenityDispatch



Category: Original Work
Genre: First work - Freeform, M/M, More Tags Later?, Sex, Slow Burn, Tags Are Hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:28:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23047795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerenityDispatch/pseuds/SerenityDispatch
Summary: A new teacher moves into the area, and Landon seems to be doing something he hasn’t done in years.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Kudos: 2





	The Teacher

“Wake up, buttercup!” I say while walking into her room.

Naturally, her room hasn’t been cleaned in a week and even though I love Polly, she’s a tenth grader, making her extra annoying in the mornings.

  
She starts stirring in the bed, opening her eyes to the very bright light I’m shining at her using my phone.

  
“Dad... what the fuck’s with the light?” she says.

  
“I thought you got used to the light on your phone. Doesn’t seem to bother you at one o’clock.”

  
“Ugh. You suck Dad.”

  
“Better than you do.”

  
She screams into her throw pillow and tells me to leave so she can get ready. I love doing that. I know that this is all being a bad influence, but that’s what happens when you’re only thirty with a high schooler. And I'd rather be in her tiktoks than not know what it is.

  
Polly’s in the “first day of school” mindset where she sleeps at 9, wakes at 6, makes breakfast and showers, and is on the bus right on time. She told me to wake her up. Like that’ll happen again.

  
I’m drinking up a black coffee staring at the menu design. Design has always been something I focused on without realizing and I’m starting to hate that little tidbit about me. I don’t want this menu to look like a 40-year-old dad tried taking pictures for the first time and thought adding a green filter would be “aesthetically pleasing”. If this is what a wedding is like, I’m happy I never had one.

  
There’s still cleaning, maintenance, and training the cooks but I’m trying to push all of this away because otherwise I’ll crash back into college life with Red Bull’s and late-night procrastination. I’m going to get overloaded so one thing at a time. Even if it is moving shapes a centimeter each direction.

  
——

  
“How was your first day of school?” I said  
singsongingly.

  
“Fine.”

  
“Oh come on, you’re saying nothing interesting? No girl talk? Guys?”

  
“Ugh! Sometimes I hate that you’re a male. Can’t you be a mom and just shut up and be a chauffeur?” she replied, probably by instinct.  
“Well, that was harsh.” I know that she wants to say sorry but she can’t because she’s a teen so I let it slide as I think what I would’ve done then.

  
People judge me for taking Polly to school. They think I’m some cousin more than anything else. The soccer tournaments, the parent-teacher conferences, all of it has boiled down to my age. I just want to shout in their faces but I know deep inside that they simply are just ignorant, not cruel. I think about all the times I hurt people without realizing and I use that to help me realize why Polly is Polly. She was unlucky and she’s going to feel the same way as me.

  
She feels the same way when I take her to school and they ask for her mother or her parents. How they’ll see me and her, think that we’re not father and daughter. How she told me she didn’t want to have a dad-and-daughter dance like the rest of her friends who had 9-to-5 office workers with the same ties and prints on their clothes.

  
She skulks in her room for a good hour as I finish up this gosh-darn menu. Polly eventually comes down ready to talk about school. She tries out more of the food before she says anything.

  
And then she bursts. Talks about literally everything in a giddy way, about how Jess got the worst tan lines in the world on her trip to Greece and how the school had a new system so a bunch of teachers got into the system.

  
“Seriously, you could bang a couple.”

  
“I don’t think I want to date people my daughter is attracted to.”

  
“Well it’s not my fault! Love is love.”

  
“Now it’s my turn to say ugh.”

  
——

  
Grand opening of Lotus Garden - Restaurant. And it’s none of that chicken-and-broccoli, General Tso’s stuff with the California roll. There might be duck sauce and fortune cookies, but there’s some Cantonese soul in this restaurant. It’s not for the money, I’m lucky I don’t have to worry about that, but it’s about sending a message. A message that I, Landon Wei Yang, am a single father, Asian-American man who can work it. God this cul-de-sac needs more color. It’s like The Giver out here.

  
It’s a few weeks after the first day of school, so people are still in that giddy headspace of trying new things. Polly keeps talking about this guy named Parker who’s a douche, but she complains about it in a way to convince herself, y’know? She’s tested and critiqued my food so much over the past few months that she said she would literally vomit if I even mentioned the word “bao”.

  
I know Polly is excited about the restaurant and she wants the highest launch possible. After all, I am the one buying her that dress she wants so it’s not a bad thought to try and help your dad. She’s been talking to every person, wrote her essay in English on my restaurant, asking her art friends to make posters and put it up on the walls of her teachers. It’s endearing, really.  
I look at her everyday and see so much of me and my sister that I almost hate it.

  
——

  
The first customer starts walking in. Pen? Check. Orders memorized? Check. Cool little waiter walk I was working on-

  
He’s wearing a red velvet sweater and these joggers that just do not go together but that doesn’t matter because I can literally see his shape as if he was wearing nothing. It’s blonde hair in a hairstyle that’s not douchey or frat-boy, but elevated and I hate it.

  
I had a whole thing planned for the first customer walking in but that went out the window like my heart because I love him and I hate that I do. I don’t like this annoying, love-at-first-sight bullshit on TLC and wanted to believe it was cliche. He’s just so gorgeous.

  
“Can I sit anywhere?” I hear him say in the back of my mind.

  
“Yeah. I can even get your order right now,” I reply. I need to get him out of here now before I fall on my knees.

  
I hastily flip through the notepad to write down his order. He looks at the menu fairly quickly, considering the fact that he didn’t look Asian. I realize as I’m doing this that I’m rushing my first customer but that doesn’t really matter right now, does it?

  
“Could I get… an order of walnut buns and pan-fried noodles, with a hard-boiled egg?”

  
I write this all down, congratulating him in my head for not being the boring guy who gets something simple. I then congratulate myself as I tell the order into the kitchen for not screwing up, in more ways than one.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first work, meaning it sucks. If you guys like the first few chapters, I might do more of this, even get some fan-fic’s going. Thank you for reading anyways!!


End file.
